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My grandparents never lived more than half a block away from us and my great grandmother lived until 1969 so I saw her nearly every day for the first nine years of my life. One of my best childhood memories was being in the kitchen with both my grandmother and great grandmother on the day that we made the cannolis for Christmas Eve. I remember my great grandmother fitting the dough around the metal forms and putting them in the deep fat fryer. When my daughter was little I tried one year to make the cannoli shells from scratch like she did and all I ended up with was a ton of broken pieces of fried dough. She never broke a single shell! They were all perfectly golden brown and crispy without being greasy. Of course, I was little and wasn’t allowed anywhere near the My favorite turkeys call me auntie Thanksgiving Shirt .

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At that time, Roman culture already celebrated a holiday on December 25: Saturnalia, the winter solstice. This tradition honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, and was celebrated with merriment, feasting, and gift giving. When Rome eventually instituted Christianity as the state religion in the fourth century, the Roman church converted Saturnalia to a Christian holiday in order to commemorate Jesus’ birth. Christians have celebrated it as such ever since. The exact date of Jesus’ birth is unknown, as the Bible does not give specifics as to the dates of either His birth or conception. Some of the My favorite turkeys call me auntie Thanksgiving Shirt  elements of the celebration of Christmas seem to have derived from Saturnalia, but to pretend the whole festival is purely from this pagan tradition is nonsense. The claim is often made that “Christmas is celebrated on December 25 because that was the Roman feast of Saturnalia”.

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Sadly, I did not encounter painting until high school. I took two years of it, but I always excelled at drawing and was better at it. At KSU I took the usual oil classes and took up watercolor in illustration classes. As usual I excelled at drawing media more than painting, but as an illustrator I fought with watercolor and beat it into submission. I am good enough that I can be considered professio

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So I understood the young Black girls bias towards me. I also knew that in a White environment predominantly, I stand out as “one of the good, proper, smart ones”. What i didn’t expect was that it would be so pronounced in the South. I honestly expected more White to me/Black bias. In fact I found the Southern Whites more accommodating and helpful and thoughtful with rides (there was a black out across the city and a young White girl gave me a My favorite turkeys call me auntie Thanksgiving Shirt home so I wouldn’t have to wait on the bus. I was adamant that we talk and our coworkers know she was taking me because I was a big Black dude and she a small, young White girl.

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Christmas celebrations in the US, alone out of all holidays, last for 30 days straight, from the morning after Thanksgiving until the morning after Christmas. Holidays should not last for a month, they should happen, be celebrated, and be gone. Celebrations of a day or two are meaningful without crossing the line into annoying. Christmas, in the US, reinforces our cultural rules and the pressure that supports these rules. In contrast to other holidays, like Thanksgiving or Halloween, which act as cultural pressure valves, Christmas season reinforces the pressure to behave in a My favorite turkeys call me auntie Thanksgiving Shirt  way. American culture tells us to be positive and to spend a lot of money on conspicuous consumption. The month long Christmas season reinforces both messages. Thus during the “season” we feel more social pressure, rather than less, and that can be stifling.